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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Higher Education Leaders Talk College Affordability

By John D. Bland

Approximately
60 percent of students who have transferred to UNC Charlotte and were enrolled
last spring are working an average of 26 hours per week in order to defray the
rising costs of higher education. And of the UNC Charlotte, for the 2011-2012
academic year of graduation 65 percent of the 1,837 graduating seniors bore an
average of $23,686 of school loan debt.

Ron Carter, Pamela Davis, Phil Dubois, Tony Zeiss

Those
are some of facts that factored into discussion of college affordability with
local higher education leaders on July 3. Chancellor Dubois and presidents Ron
Carter of Johnson C. Smith University, Pamela Davies of Queens University of
Charlotte, and Tony Zeiss of Central Piedmont Community College, and UNC
Charlotte Provost Joan Lorden, talked
about challenges to and potential solutions regarding college affordability, at
a roundtable discussion sponsored and moderated by Sen. Kay Hagan at UNC
Charlotte Center City. Students and staff form the schools, and local TV and
newspaper reporters attended.

The
discussion was arranged by Hagan to get input from the education leaders and
students that will inform efforts by Congress to manage the spiraling cost of
higher education, including the rising cost of student loans and diminishing availability
of popular Pell grants.

Some of
the observations from the Dubois, Lorden and the presidents:

- Dubois
said the United States has undergone a “terrific disinvestment in higher
education” during recent decades, especially during the Great Recession. But he
said “North Carolina has tried to sustain funding for higher education.”

- Dubois
said the number of UNC Charlotte students getting Pell grants has doubled in
the last five years, based on financial need. Cuts to the federal Pell grant
program creates an affordability dilemma for those students that may require
them to work more or drop out. And even if they manage to stay in school but
work more hours, working an average of 26 hours per week is “not a good recipe
for success,” Dubois said.

- JCSU’s Carter
said that changes to the qualifying criteria for federal Parent Plus student
loans knocked 128,000 students at historically black universities and colleges
out of school. He said at JCSU, 100 student were forced to drop out and another
200 had to seek out discounts to stay in school.

- CPCC’s
Zeiss said that tuition at CP has increased 70 percent since 20007 while state
funding has dropped by 24 percent, taking a heavy toll on the 28,000 CP
college-credit students who have financial aid.

Hagan
said that for the first time, student loan debt exceeds credit card debt
nationwide.

Hagan recently
introduced the Keep Student Loans Affordable Act of 2013, which would keep the
interest rate on subsidized federal Stafford loans at the current rate of 3.4
percent for an additional year. The interest rate on federal Stafford loans doubled
to 6.8 percent for 176,000 North Carolina students on July 1.

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